Description:
Senku, Chrome, and Kohaku attempt to gather materials for making antibiotics. Unable to generate enough manpower to create one of the necessary materials, they instead focus on helping the village.
Appearance:
Invention of the Episode: Ramen
Ramen is an adaptation of Chinese wheat noodles. It is theorized that ramen was introduced by Chinese immigrants in the late 19th or early 20th century in the Yokohama Chinatown.
I assume that the ramen made in the episode is Shio ramen (or salt ramen) since it is the oldest of the ramen types. This type of ramen is made with plenty of salt and any combination of chicken, vegetables, fish, and seaweed.
Senku made his ramen noodles out of foxtail millet (which is the substitute for wheat flour here). The other ingredients in making noodles are salt, water, and kansui, which is a type of alkaline mineral water, containing sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate. When Senku mentions that it was discovered by some nameless Mongol, it is because kansui originated in Inner Mongolia, where some lakes contained large amounts of potassium carbonate.
Execution:
What I liked:
Suika! I don’t care what anyone says, Suika (and Great Detective Suika) is absolutely adorable. We still don’t know why she wears the watermelon on her head, but I’m ten billion percent sure that it has something to do with an anxiety she may have. Either that, or she seriously doesn’t know how to get the watermelon off of her head.
Also, Senku notices that the villagers have knowledge of certain things that they should have no idea about such as Momotaro (a hero from Japanese folklore) and gorillas. They learned about these things from Ruri, Kohaku’s older sister. This means that some knowledge has been passed down somehow, which adds a layer of mystery to the story.
What I didn’t like:
I don’t quite understand the reason why outsiders aren’t allowed I the village. In the context of the story so far, the only people in the outside world are banished prisoners and those who are encased in stone. So, having a rule that says that no outsiders are allowed seems…unnecessary.
Unless there is something we haven’t been told yet.
Taste:
There really wasn’t anything extremely noteworthy in this episode. I feel like this show has a cycle where it goes from seriously science based to comedy with some science sprinkled in. It makes it pretty difficult to stay interested because the comedic episodes feel filler-ish.
That being said, I think that most of us watch this show for the creations. On that front, this episode was rock solid. Who doesn’t love ramen?!
